Chapter 22

Back when she lived in a cramped back room behind a hostess bar, Seo-ha’s only friends were two cameras. If anyone had found out what that equipment was worth, someone would surely have taken it off her. Fortunately, people were too busy scraping a living to spare a glance at the cameras, which looked like old junk.

“That fun, pup?”
“It’s amazing. Whatever I’m looking at gets held inside this little window.”
“That one liked bein’ put into ‘em, and you like doin’ the puttin’, is that the way of it…”

Now and then Granny would give Seo-ha a pitying look and say things that made little sense.

That Seo-ha could run errands from one hostess bar to the next and still never go hungry was entirely Granny’s doing. The old woman had turned up in the brothel village one day out of nowhere, and everybody there called her Granny Ok-i. Once she took charge of the hostess bar’s kitchen, Seo-ha’s days got far easier. Even the camera Seo-ha treasured so dearly had originally belonged to Granny Ok-i; she had handed it over, saying she had no use for it herself.

“Me — I can write my letters properly now, and I can read as well, so when do you think I’ll be able to go to school?”

Whenever Seo-ha ran an errand into the town a good way off, she saw children walking in threes and fours with satchels on their backs. On television, children going to school was simply the natural order of things. But in this country backwater, where brothels and illegal gambling dens flourished side by side, not one person spared a thought for Seo-ha. She had turned eight and still could not go to school.

“Our clever Seo-ha picked up her letters quick, didn’t she. Are you lookin’ proper at them workbooks Granny gave you?”
“If I study them really hard, can I go to school?”
“’Course you can.”

Whatever she looked like on the outside, Seo-ha had a quick mind and was quite a capable little thing. For a child who got through each day shoved aside and kicked by wicked grown-ups, Granny Ok-i was the first and only guardian who ever held her in a warm embrace. Granny kept her fed and never begrudged teaching her the Korean alphabet herself.

Strangely, though, Granny hated washing her, and hated it even when Seo-ha washed herself. Every time Seo-ha whined for a bath, Granny would bellow at her.

“But my head itches!”
“Just scratch it good and hard with this comb. My, won’t that feel fine!”
“It smells sour and rotten, waaah.”
“There’s no smell at all, is there? Who’d you take after, to be so fussy? So fussy.”

Granny dressed Seo-ha in nothing but smelly, grubby clothes and let her go about with her hair in a wild tangle. Shaggy hair covered the child’s small face so completely that only her eyes showed, dark and sullen.

Only once she was grown did she understand. In that place, where beasts in human shape outnumbered the people, Granny keeping Seo-ha filthy had not been neglect. It had been her only way to protect a girl who was growing up fast.

“Granny, Mi-hee-unnie said something to me. She said my mom threw me away here because I’m useless. She said I’m ugly, so even when I’m grown I won’t be able to take customers the way Mi-hee-unnie does, and I’ll starve to death. I did refuse to run the errand she told me to, though…”

She wasn’t crying as she said it. She was simply pouring out her hurt to Granny Ok-i, the one person who ever listened.

But before Seo-ha had even finished, Granny stormed out of the cramped back room the two of them shared, grabbed Mi-hee-unnie by the hair and shook her.

After that uproar, Seo-ha stopped telling Granny about the slights and wrongs that galled her, because she had come to understand that they pained Granny Ok-i more than they pained her. To a child, that alone was a great comfort. Thanks to the old woman, Seo-ha’s heart grew hard enough that even in that hellish place, curses and slaps could not shake it.

One day Granny came in with a thick paper envelope and thrust it at Seo-ha out of nowhere.

“Here now, Seo-ha. A birthday present for you. Many happy returns.”
“But it isn’t my birthday today? I don’t have a birthday. They said nobody knows when it is.”
“Then let’s say today’s your birthday. If the two of us say it’s your birthday, then that’s your birthday.”

Seo-ha tilted her head, puzzled, and opened the envelope. Inside were the scenes she had stored in her head like holograms, held on paper exactly as they had been. A dog, a cat, the sky, a tree, Granny Ok-i’s face… On that square of paper the old woman was laughing with every wrinkle spread wide, wearing an expression you seldom caught on her.

“Wow, this is so amazing!”

The film camera was useless unless Granny got hold of film for her, so Seo-ha played with the digital one more often. Still, she wrestled with both of them day in and day out, and her hands could not help but learn them. By now she could work them with her eyes shut and pick out the slightest difference in aperture.

She was so young and knew so little that it had never even occurred to her that a photograph taken with a film camera could be printed onto paper. The moment she saw the pictures, Seo-ha understood with her whole body an idiom she had first met in a book: ‘it sends a thrill through you’.

“They printed ‘em up from the ones you took. You know that place at the edge of town that takes pictures of folk who’re about to die? They’ll print ’em like this for you.”
“It’s like it photographed my eyes and the inside of my head just the way they are!”

Back then, the printed paper she was seeing for the first time meant nothing to Seo-ha but wonder and joy. Young Seo-ha had no way of knowing why Granny, who had never once gone into town in all her life, would go to a funeral-portrait studio of all places¹ to have the pictures printed.

No. Looking back on it now, that was all an excuse.

Yun Seo-ha had been a sharp, quick-witted child. From the moment she could tell right from wrong, she had knocked about the brothel village and seen every sight it had to offer. Could she really claim she hadn’t known and excuse it with ‘I was just a kid’? She had only wanted to pretend not to know, because she longed to stay a little longer in a life that had Granny in it.

The saying that you should never take in a black-haired beast² held true in every age.

“Hnngh, Granny…”

Seo-ha slowly opened her eyes. The skin at the corner of her eye felt dry and crusted, as though tears had run down it.

She owed eight parts in ten of the life she had lived so far to Granny Ok-i, though things had come to a pass where ‘thanks to her’ sat a little awkwardly… Still, if she ever met the old woman again in the next world, Seo-ha badly wanted to tell her this: that thanks to Granny, she had lived well, right up to the day she arrived there herself.

I’ll make sure that’s how it turns out, no matter what.

Seo-ha squeezed her eyes shut once, opened them, and drew air deep into her lungs. Perhaps because she had rinsed her eyes out thoroughly yesterday and skipped the eye drops Cha Mi-yeon always put in for her, everything in front of her looked brighter than usual today.

“Dodam, come here.”

She heard the soft patter of Dodam’s paws, the sound that always settled her heart.

Her body was still heavy, the tiredness perhaps not quite worn off, but Seo-ha forced herself upright and blinked a couple of times. A brown shape came dimly into view at the foot of the bed, and she crawled to it on all fours and flung her arms around Dodam’s neck.

“Why didn’t you come to me? Did you think noona wouldn’t know you were right there?³”

Dodam must have been swinging his tail hard, because it thumped against Seo-ha’s shoulder. She showered his face and the back of his neck with kisses.

“Our Dodam and I might even be able to play hide-and-seek soon.”

Dreams of the past always tormented Seo-ha, but Granny Ok-i hardly ever appeared in them, so when Granny did come into a dream, Seo-ha was especially glad. In the years she had wanted to escape, the old woman had been the only thing in her life that came close to a place of rest. It was Granny, too, who threw her whole body in the way, more than once, when men drunk on liquor and drugs dragged Seo-ha off. Without her, there would have been no Seo-ha as she was now.

Dodam must have noticed her expression turn a little grave, because he licked wildly at her cheek and lips as if to comfort her.

“Aw, that tickles.”

Wanting to shake off the weight on her heart, Seo-ha smiled wide on purpose. The dimple in her cheek sank deeper than it ever had.

“Let’s have a look at you. Shall I take a look at our Dodam’s handsome face?”

When she pulled Dodam close, she could make out the colors of his eyes, nose and mouth, roughly at least. Honestly, even this much felt as though a vision buff had activated.

“Wow, you really do look like a prince.”

Seo-ha reached out playfully and patted Dodam a couple of times.

For someone who had gone a good long while unable to see properly, she was recovering faster than she had expected, which was a relief. Wanting a surer sense of how her eyes were doing, Seo-ha looked slowly around her. Even at a distance, she could now clearly make out the shapes of things, at least. With this much sight she wouldn’t go blundering into things even without Dodam, and at the thought, joy welled up of its own accord.

“Ah, but the glare is too much.”

Seo-ha turned her head toward the window, where sunlight poured through, and shaded her eyes with her hand.

She hadn’t noticed through the glare, but a large, dark shape stood beside the bed.